Design Principles

Balance, harmony, emphasis, unity, scale, line, form, texture.

 

 

Whether one is designing a garden, a living room, or a marketing piece, adhering to the fundamental principles of good design can make a difference in finished product “working” or “not working” In the garden, the canvas is ever changing. Seasonal differences, plant growth, and human interaction, all combine to create challenges for the designer, and reinforce the need to rely on a set of basic elements to achieve success.

 

This month our designers offer their thoughts on Design Principles. Follow the links below to see what they have to say!

 

Jocelyn Chilvers : The Art Garden : Denver, CO

David Cristiani : It’s A Dry Heat : Albuquerque, NM

Mary Gallagher Gray : Black Walnut Dispatch : Washington, D.C.

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Susan Cohan : Miss Rumphius’ Rules : Chatham, NJ

 

 

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Enclosure vs. Exposure

To enclose or not to enclose, that is the question…

Photo courtesy The Heggarty-Webber Partnership

With all apologies to The Bard, today on Garden Designers Roundtable, our designers offer their thoughts on whether to enclosure a space, and create intimacy and security, or to expose a space and borrow from the surrounding landscape, possibly creating a sense of awe.

Which would you prefer for you little corner of the earth? Follow the links below to see what our experts say then let us know!

 

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Jocelyn Chilvers : The Art Garden : Denver, CO

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

 

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Focus on Details!

A simple detail, an object left in a doorway, creates this garden vignette!

It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.

… John Wooden

 

God is in the details.

… Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

 

Details create the big picture.
… Sanford I. Weill

 

Success is the sum of details.

… Harvey S. Firestone

 

Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right.

                … Steve Jobs

 

There’s no escaping the notion that, to get something right you have to pay attention to the simplest of details. As witnessed above, by some very successful people, the worth of the final product rests in the effort to successfully master each part of the whole, to focus on the details.

What does this mean for the garden design process, or a new landscape? A focus on the details in the design process might show in many forms; as a unified color scheme, or the perfect accoutrements in an outdoor dining area, as an abstract piece of art that anchors the design, or in the perfect groundcover choice to complement stones in a garden pathway. A focus on the details might also show in how a designer has thoughtfully tended to each of her clients needs, or how a designer has addressed every one of his client’s concerns. Orchestrating the symphony of contractors needed to complete a project on time and under budget, are details that should always capture the designers focus, thereby leaving the client simply to enjoy the newly created space.

When you pause to enjoy a beautiful garden and find yourself lost within its balance and complexity, and you feel, without at first knowing why, that everything just seems to work, look a little closer.  You’ll find that someone brought all the elements of the garden together, by focusing on the details.

Our designers are focusing on the details this month; follow the links below to see how!

Susan Cohan : Miss Rumphius’ Rules : Chatham, NJ

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Deborah Silver : Dirt Simple : Detroit, MI

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

Christina Salwitz : Personal Garden Coach : Renton, WA

Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In The Garden : Los Altos, CA

 

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Designing with Native Plants!

Do native plants, and the wildlife that depend on them, have a place in our landscapes? More and more, professional designers are answering with a resounding “yes!” Setting aside the question of aesthetics for a moment, there’s a clear need for people to replace their resource-hogging lawns and may-as-well-be-plastic exotics with something that their local birds, butterflies and bees can use as food and habitat.

According to the US government, 41% of our land is being used for production agriculture (which is not beneficial to wildlife), and all but 5% of the remaining area of land is now a mix of urban, suburban, and industrial landscapes. We think of “nature” as existing somewhere out there, but the amount of area we leave for nature is shrinking rapidly due to our need for food and housing. If we care at all about preserving the species that share our world, we need to step up and help. Planting wildlife-supporting native plants is one of the simplest ways of doing that.

Of course, landscaping is something we do to express ourselves artistically and create a place where we enjoy spending time. Few designers like the idea of limiting their palette to only natives, and rightly so. An artist’s palette benefits from the addition of differing colors, textures, and styles of plant.

However, landscaping with natives brings a variety of benefits. Not only does it attract wildlife, which brings us a sense of awe and connection to our gardens, but planting our region’s natives is a way of celebrating the unique character of the places we each live. Have you ever visited a new location, and realized there was nothing at all to distinguish it from home? The same strip malls, chain stores, and Berberis-and-daylily planting schemes that bore us at home, followed us to our new location.

Planting natives is a way of creating a regionally-distinct identity, reminding yourself why you live where you do, and remembering what’s special about your exact place in the world. While nobody’s telling you to back away from the bulb catalogs, why not challenge yourself to learn more about your region’s plants, and start adding them to your palette as well? Let’s flip the lawn-dominated, no-character landscape paradigm on its head and begin planting landscapes with a little more meaning.

How are professional designers working with natives? Read this month’s Garden Designers Roundtable posts to get ideas and inspiration for your own landscape.

Thomas Rainer : Grounded Design : Washington, D.C.

David Cristiani : The Desert Edge : Albuquerque, NM

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In The Garden : Los Altos, CA

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Mary Gallagher Gray : Black Walnut Dispatch : Washington, D.C.

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Genevieve Schmidt : North Coast Gardening : Arcata, CA

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT

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Texture!

Texture is a very small and compact word that refers to a very dynamic and fluid element of design.  Strictly speaking, texture refers to the nature and quality of a surface.  In a garden, this might refer to bold leaves, as in Gunnera, Rodgersia, Ligularia or Butterbur, as opposed to the tiny leaves of boxwood, or thyme.  It refers to the hairy leaves of Tibouchina, and the open surface of great soil.   It might refer to that puffy and fleeting natural circumstance we know as cumulus clouds.  It might refer to a thinly woven fabric of a garden umbrella.  It might refer to that fluid and sparkling surface we know as water.  It may refer to the craggy surface of stone.  It may refer to wood planed smooth, as in garden furniture.  Texture refers to a surface, a surface you can feel, a surface you can see, a surface you can touch, and a surface you can taste.

Texture engages virtually all of the senses.  The qualities of the surface we recognize as stone are vastly different that the soft texture of a field of grass. You either like raw oysters, okra, or beef-or not.  How does your garden taste?  How do your garden surfaces engage the eye?  Natural surfaces are infinite in their variety.  The choices are infinite.  Make sure your design sense includes an appreciation and consideration of the quality of the surface, the texture.

Texture engages, and holds, the eye.  Texture gives a set of fingers a reason to be.   Texture leaves a strong taste. Read on to see how every designer associated with the Roundtable in this June post interprets texture.

Enjoy,

Deborah Silver

Thomas Rainer : Grounded Design : Washington, D.C.

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In The Garden : Los Altos, CA

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Deborah Silver : Dirt Simple : Detroit, MI

David Cristiani : The Desert Edge : Albuquerque, NM

Christina Salwitz : Personal Garden Coach : Renton, WA

Andrew Keys : Garden Smackdown : Boston, MA

Rochelle Greayer : Studio G : Boston, MA

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First Impressions!

Everyone likes to make a good first impression. We play up our positive attributes and control our annoying quirks in order to impress others in that crucial first three seconds of meeting.  According to an article in Psychology Today, “Our brains form first impressions by creating a composite of all the signals given off by a new experience.”

From a real estate perspective, a good first impression – or “curb appeal” – is all about using your landscape to enhance the appearance of your home. Does the landscape echo the style of your home’s architecture?  Does it meet or exceed the standards set by the neighborhood? Is it well maintained? The landscape is like the neatly pressed suit and polished shoes that are among the basic signals given off at  a first meeting.

More important, however, is not what the landscape says about your house, but what it says about you.  Is it welcoming? Is it engaging? Is it quiet and elegant, or colorful and gregarious?  Expressing yourself in the publicly viewed part of your landscape is like offering a heart-felt smile at a first meeting; the signal that we look for specifically because (it) “… lets us know that we’re likely to get a positive reception.”

Creating a great first impression from the front curb (or kerb as our British friends prefer) can set the tone for your entire landscape.

Please join the Roundtable bloggers today as we explore the best of First Impressions:

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Jocelyn Chilvers : The Art Garden : Denver, CO

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Christina Salwitz : Personal Garden Coach : Renton, WA

Shirley Bovshow : Eden Makers : Los Angeles, CA

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Gardening with Deer

Quite a few years ago at a conference for the Connecticut Nurserymen’s Association, I sat in on a talk by a local landscape architect who’s topic was “Deer-Proof plants”. Slide after slide he would tell the audience “this particular plant has shown great resistance to deer” or “deer won’t eat this because…”, and slide after slide some member of the audience would raise their hand and say “the deer eat that in my garden”. The poor guy never stood a chance.

Deer have become a major problem in the landscape, and the reasons for the increase in deer damage range from development encroaching on their territory to populations thriving on the lush banquet our gardens provide for them. Whatever the reason, choosing the right plant for the right place no longer guarantees success in the garden, you must also ask “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”

This month on the Roundtable, our designers discuss, “Gardening with Deer”. Follow the links below and find out how they deal with their uninvited “guests”!

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Genevieve Schmidt : North Coast Gardening : Arcata, CA

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Christina Salwitz : Personal Garden Coach : Renton, WA

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In The Garden : Los Altos, CA

Tara Dilliard : Vanishing Threshold: Garden, Life, Home : Atlanta, GA

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Getting From Here to There

This month on Garden Designers Roundtable we explore the topic of Getting From Here to There.  As is true with many GDRT topics, this one is open to a multitude of different interpretations. In a very straightforward sense, Getting From Here to There can refer to the actual physical movement from one place in the garden to another.

Getting From Here to There can refer to the process of designing a garden – getting from ‘before’ to ‘after’, and everything in between. Or, in a more nuanced interpretation, it might refer to the never-ending pursuit of an ideal garden, one that is truly never finished.

Getting From Here to There...the possibilities are endless. And isn’t that what the Garden Designers Roundtable is all about?

Our Special Guests

Joining the Garden Designers Roundtable this month to give their interpretation of the topic are design writer, Debra Prinzing and photographer, David Perry, collaborators on the soon-to-be-published book, A Fresh Bouquet.

Debra Prinzing is a Seattle- and Los Angeles-based outdoor living expert who writes and lectures on gardens and home design. She has a background in textiles, journalism, landscape design and horticulture. A frequent speaker for botanical garden, horticultural society and flower show audiences, Debra is also a regular radio and television guest. Her five books include Garden Writers Association Gold Award-winning Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways (Clarkson-Potter/Random House, 2008) and The Abundant Garden (2005).

Debra is the new contributing garden editor for Better Homes & Gardens and her feature stories on architecture and design appear regularly in the Los Angeles Times’ Home section. She is also a contributing editor to Garden Design magazine and writes for top shelter and consumer publications, including Organic Gardening, Horticulture, Fine Gardening, Cottages & Bungalows, Metropolitan Home, Landscape Architecture, Sunset, Alaska Airlines Magazine, Old House Interiors, Seattle Homes & Lifestyles and Romantic Homes, among others. Find out more about Debra on her website and blog.

David Perry is an inspirational photographer, a willing teacher and a captivating storyteller who brings the unique insights and skills garnered in his thirty plus years of worldwide, on-location photo assignments for major corporations, ad agencies, magazines and book publishers to each new project he encounters.

The inquisitive son of a zoologist, David grew up in the field with his dad, trapping and preserving specimens for museums, exploring caves and studying the complex interplay between life forms and their ecologies from the southern reaches of Mexico to northern Canada. He began documenting his impressions of the living world around him with cameras at a very early age.

His very popular, A Photographer’s Garden Blog, which he started publishing in January, 2007 brings thousands of readers together each week through garden tours, thoughtful essays, seasonal imagery and playful photographic assignments and contests that readers actively participate in.

Onstage he is a spirited, dynamic and slightly irreverent speaker who makes his presentation topics memorable and relevant to audiences through the ample use of clever graphics, breathtaking imagery, playful humor, and by never, ever talking down to them.

You can find out more about Debra and David’s new book about seasonal, local and sustainably-grown cut flowers by visiting their website A Fresh Bouquet.

Don’t forget to stop back again next week, on September 27^th for links to Getting From Here to There. In the meantime, visit us on our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter

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Stone!

Perhaps nothing helps the designer establish a sense of place more than stone. Ancient and timeless, it marks the passing of time as it offers a promise of the future. It serves as support, defines borders, acts as decoration, and honors through memorial. Millenia to form and longer still to return to mineral form, stone simply is… place!

The Roundtable, is pleased to announce two special guests, Deborah Silver and Sunny Wieler join in our discsussion on stone.

Deborah Silver

Deborah Silver, owner and design principal for Deborah Silver and Co Inc, has been a professional landscape and garden designer in the Midwest for the past 25 years. Her shop, Detroit Garden Works, is devoted to fine containers, ornament, furniture and unusual plants for the garden.  Opened in 1996, it was ranked as one of the top 25 garden stores in the US by Garden Design magazine, Martha Stewart magazine listed the shop in their top 50 products and places in March of 2011.  The Branch Studio manufactures garden ornament from her design in steel, wood and concrete. She writes regularly on topics relating to landscape and garden design via her blog, Dirt Simple.

Sunny Wieler

When Sunny Wieler is not on his blog ‘Stone Art Blog’ sharing his interests in stonework and all things creative in the landscape and garden, you will find him working at his day job creating unique and artistic stonework and gardens for the people of Ireland.

Sunny’s passion for landscaping spans back to his teen years where he would spend his weekends working in his neighbours gardens, which he continued to do up into until his college years. While obtaining his degree in Fine Art & Sculpture in the Crawford College of Art & Design in Cork, he would spend many of his free weekends building garden projects for his friends and family. After graduating from college he worked for several different landscaping companies, where he continued to develop his skills. In 2005 he set up his company, Stone Art. Initially Stone Art provided artistic stonework and garden features, but with increasing demand this quickly developed into full landscaping services.

In 2008 Sunny also spent a year working for a landscaping company in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he got to experience the fantastic wonders of landscaping on the other side of the planet. When he returned to Ireland he set about achieving his diploma in landscape & garden design from Limpert’s Academy of Design in Dublin.

Almost two years ago, Sunny started writing his blog ‘Stone Art Blog’, one of the greatest joys Sunny gets from his blog is meeting very interesting and talented artisans, stonemasons, landscape designers and garden enthusiasts from all over the world and getting and insight into their lives and work.

Now, please follow the links below and join our two special guests and the members of the Roundtable, as we consider stone.

Deborah Silver : Dirt Simple : Detroit, MI

Sunny Wieler : Stone Art Blog : West Cork, Ireland

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Ivette Soler : The Germinatrix : Los Angeles, CA

Jenny Peterson : J Peterson Garden Design : Austin TX

Rochelle Greayer : Studio G : Boston, MA

Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT

Susan Cohan : Miss Rumphius’ Rules : Chatham, NJ

Tara Dillard : Vanishing Threshold : Atlanta, GA

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Stone! Tuesday May 24th

Please join us this coming Tuesday May 24th as the Roundtable considers Stone and its connection with the Garden. We are very happy this month to welcome not one, but two very talented designers to join us for this topic. Deborah Silver of Deborah Silver and Co. and Sunny Wieler of Stone Art.

If you are a Stone afficianado, or if our looking for inspiration on a project you are considering, you won’t want to miss Tuesday’s posts!

See you then!

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